A poll carried out in the Palestinian Authority shows 65% support for Al Qaeda terror attacks on the United States and European countries - the biggest donors to the PA.

The poll comes at a time when US and European funding of the Palestinian Authority is at an all-time high.

With elections due to be held next month and the Hamas terror group gaining significantly in municipal elections and polls, the survey further illustrates the desire of a majority of PA Arabs to establish an Islamic state, similar to Iran. A whopping 79.9% of Palestinians would like the PA to follow Shari'a - Islamic religious law. Included in the figure are 11.3% of the respondents, who would like to see Shari'a supplemented by the laws of a PA Legislature.

Not one more dime of American foreign aid should find its way into Palestinian coffers. This is a populace that supports terrorist attacks that is governed by an Authority that uses official funds to compensate the families of suicide bombers.

Enough is enough. What ever happened to the idea that you were either on the side of America in the war on terror, or against America?

Friday, December 30, 2005

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Cheap Monday jeans are a hot commodity among young Swedes thanks to their trendy tight fit and low price, even if a few buyers are turned off by the logo: a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead.

Logo designer Bjorn Atldax says he's not just trying for an antiestablishment vibe.

"It is an active statement against Christianity," Atldax told The Associated Press. "I'm not a Satanist myself, but I have a great dislike for organized religion."

The label's makers say it's more of a joke, but Atldax insists his graphic designs have a purpose beyond selling denim: to make young people question Christianity, a "force of evil" that he blames for sparking wars throughout history.

This is probably just a way for young Europeans to protest all the Christofascist suicide bombers that roam the globe.

Its almost like these morons receive their education right off the pages of the New York Times.

TYLER – A woman and her teenage daughter were killed Wednesday in a crash sparked by what a state trooper called “a classic case of road rage.”

Jason Youngblood, 32, of Fort Worth was arrested after the Wednesday afternoon accident, which also left the woman's 17-year-old son in critical condition at a Tyler hospital.

(Snip)

Youngblood, driving a Chevrolet minivan containing his wife and four children, became agitated when he could not pass the other vehicle and started tailgating, Matura said. He pulled up on the right of the car, a Toyota Camry.

“The story is complicated here, but eyewitnesses said Youngblood was looking at the other vehicle and was mouthing. He then made the decision to cut them off, but misjudged the distance,” Matura said.

The minivan clipped the Camry and sent it across the median. The Toyota then was hit in the rear by a Chevrolet Tahoe traveling west.

We've all seen these assholes on the road--the tailgaters and the shoulder passers, the bird flippers and the screamers. Here, one such tough man behind the wheel has killed two, critically injured another, and sent a fourth person (a child) to the hospital.

I hope this guy never sees another day of sunlight the rest of his life.

"The Mayor of Bethlehem is Christian, but it’s Hamas that’s in charge and they plan to return their Christian brethren to Dhimmitude, or to the inferior status traditional Islam grants to the people of the book. The Italian website "Chiesa Online reports:

The general plan of Hamas also includes the imposition of a special tax, called al-jeziya, upon all of the non-Muslim residents in the Palestinian territories. This tax revives the one applied through all of Islamic history to the dhimmi, the second-class Jewish and Christian citizens.

In an interview with Karby Legget, published in the December 23-26 edition of “The Wall Street Journal,” Masalmeh, the leader of the Hamas contingent at the municipal council of Bethlehem, confirmed: “We in Hamas intend to implement this tax someday. We say it openly – we welcome everyone to Palestine but only if they agree to live under our rules.”

Why is there no general Christian outcry? Because the Christian mayor supports incorporating Hamas into the political system. Pity. As this is the time they have most leverage and could have conditioned Hamas' participation in the elections on its commitment never to return non-Muslim Palestinians to Dhimmitude.

In other words, Bethlehem Christians are repeating the mistakes German Jews when the Nazis were running for office and secular Iranians and minorities made when Khomeini was negotiating his return. Bethlehem Christians behave like children who refuse to learn from the experience of others and their co-religionists, including the Vatican, are following their example.

Thursday, December 29, 2005

It is tough not to love a cartoon that combines the brutality of Saddam, the moral corruptedness of Ramsey Clark and the pointed observations of Cox and Forkum all at once. (Mighty fine navigation from Little Green Footballs too.)

Mark looks at the Arnold Schwarzenegger flap with his home town of Graz, Austria. It seems that Arnold, being sworn to uphold the laws of California (not to mention the will of the people that elected him,) felt he should allow Tookie Williams to face the legally sanctioned punishment he was sentenced to after his brutal murder of four Californians. The punishment was death.

The resultant bunching of panties was unbearable for the folks of Graz who attempted to punish Arnold for his barbarism. Arnold had other ideas.

Americans have responsibilities, Europeans have attitudes. Indeed, the EU has attitudes in inverse proportion to its ability to act on them. It’s able to strut and preen on the world stage secure in the knowledge that nobody expects it to do anything about anything.

...if it's not legal for an NSA listening station, outside the country, to "detect" the communications of our enemies, wherever they might happen to lead (and most especially to operatives within our country's borders), what in the heck do we have an NSA for? Let me put it this way, if the New York Times had reported that in the wake of 9/11, the NSA was not "detecting" the international communications of known Al Qaeda operatives because they couldn't get FISA warrants to do so, don't you think this same group of caterwauling liberals would be calling Bush incompetent on that basis? And if, under that imaginary scenario, Al Qaeda hit us again, and it was determined that we had cell phone numbers/etc. of the people who carried out the attacks but didn't tap them because of concerns about getting a warrant under a statute written in the 70s, do you really think we'd ever hear the end of the bloviating from Reid, et al - not to mention the has-been gasbags they'd inevitably dig up for the blue-ribbon finger-pointing commission?

In what is good news for all Americans except democrats, the Consumer Confidence Index has increased to levels higher than at any time since Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast in late August.

Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board’s Consumer Research Center, said in a statement accompanying the report that “consumer confidence continues to bounce back” from the beating it took after the hurricane.

“The resiliency of the economy, recent declines in prices at the pump, and job growth have consumers feeling more confident at year-end than they felt at the start of 2005,” Franco said. “Consumers are confident that the economy will continue to expand in 2006.”

The consumer confidence index stood at 102.7 in December 2004. The report is closely watched because consumer spending drives about two-thirds of the U.S. economy, and gains in sentiment tend to precede increases in spending.

In what can only be described as blatant hypocrisy, Harvard University wants to disallow military recruiters on its campus (while still receiving federal funds) because of their "don't ask don't tell" policy toward any recruit's sexual orientation. Harvard is a member of the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc. (FAIR) a group of 14 law schools that banded together to challenge the Solomon Amendment--that law provision that gave the government the ability to deny funding to those schools disallowing military recruiting. From FrontPageMag.com.

Given the military’s current exclusionary policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” for gays in the armed forces, the law schools asserted that military recruiters, insofar as they knowingly and openly violated the long-held anti-discrimination precepts of the schools, would be unwelcome at recruitment events.

There is, however, another side to this sad story.

In the same weeks that Harvard waited for high court’s response to the FAIR appeal, good fortune smiled on the institution with the announcement of a $20 million gift from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The express purpose of the prince’s contribution, in his own words, is to “bridge the gap between East and West, between Christianity and Islam, and between Saudi Arabia and the United States.” The prince, reputed to be the world’s fifth richest man and chairman of the Riyadh-based Kingdom Holding Co., has been intent on “bridging the gap” for some time now. He was, it may be remembered, the same individual whose intended $10 million gift to families of 9/11 victims was returned by then-Mayor Giuliani after the prince off-handedly mentioned that the U.S. had to “reexamine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause . . . Our Palestinian brethren continue to be slaughtered at the hands of Israelis while the world turns the other cheek.”

Lest anyone doubt what side of the Palestinian-Israeli debate Alwaleed comes down on, one could point to yet another donation he made in 2002. During a government-sponsored, live-broadcast telethon for the benefit of Palestinian families of suicide bomber “martyrs,” which eventually raised $100 million, the prince himself made a pledge of $27 million to help show Saudi support for the Palestinian cause.

Politics aside, the prince’s donation presents a thornier ethical issue for Harvard. Considering the school’s strenuously professed commitment to equality, how is it to justify taking a major gift—and agreeing to set up an entire Middle East research center—from a donor who is a member of the ruling family of a repressive, totalitarian, sexist theocracy? The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that Harvard Law School could not abide on the part of the military is a triumph of civic tolerance compared to Saudi laws against homosexuality. In the prince’s homeland, homosexuality is a capital crime and accused homosexuals have been not only shunned but also beheaded. Shari’a law allows punishment for “deviant sexual behavior” ranging from imprisonment and flogging to death, and the self-appointed guardians of Saudi sexual mores do not hesitate to put it into practice. As a result, the country has seen the conviction by a Jeddah court of alleged transvestites, while thirty-one men suffered 200 lashes each and multi-month prison terms. Four other men in the incident received two years imprisonment and 2,000 lashes.

Still another characteristic of the prince’s totalitarian society should offend Harvard’s commitment to academic inquiry and free expression. This would be the virtual ban on any “non-conforming” speech on the part of teachers; in Saudi Arabia, apostasy is also a capital offense, and teachers who question religious dogma are at risk. This past November, for example, a high school chemistry teacher received 750 lashes and over three years in prison from a Saudi court for engaging students in discussions about Christianity, Judaism and terrorism. Similarly, in 2004, a Riyadh court permanently banned one Muhammad al-Sahimi from teaching. He received three years in prison and 300 lashes for “endorsing allegedly un-Islamic sexual, social and religious practices.”

Why would an institution sitting on a $25.9 billion endowment feel the need to pander to such ideologies?

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

I must admit that I don't have a ton of respect for the findings of an Iranian Court. Perhaps that is just an ethnocentric admission of xenophobia. But, if the men are rapists they deserve harsh punishment. If the crime is authentic and if the defendants were guilty it isn't so much the death penalty that has me disturbed, but rather the way the punishment is to be meted out.

Iran’s Islamic Penal Code is very specific about the manner of execution and types of stones which should be used for stoning sentences. Article 102 states that men will be buried up to their waists and women up to their breasts for the purpose of execution by stoning. Article 104 states, with reference to the penalty for adultery, that the stones used should “not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes, nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones”.

I cannot believe that Allah takes pride in this butchery. Wouldn't his punishment be enough?

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- U.S. President George Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for international wiretaps because the court was challenging him at an unprecedented rate.

A review of Justice Department reports to Congress by Hearst newspapers shows the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined.

The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation.

But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for surveillance by the Bush administration, the report said. A total of 173 of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 and 2004. And, the judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court's history.

Who writes this crap? What serious student of journalism could possible write something so crappy? Finally, how could crap like this ever make it onto the report of a global press syndicate? I've been out of college for a lot of years and more fatty tissue presses on my brain every day, but even I, in my advancing state of age, know crap journalism when I see it. And this is crap.

The White House may have decided to bypass FISA because of difficulty obtaining warrants, but that in and of itself does not prove the flippancy the article and headline state in direct terms. Where is the source for this accusation? You mean to tell me that there wasn't even one anonymous source?

If we are to believe the numbers supplied (which I think are probably correct) we still can see that the Bush White House has requested 1411 requests per year. In the prior 22 years of the Court's existence, there were, on average, 595 per year. The court's workload rose over 137%. Did the added work load of the Court slow things down to an unacceptable pace? We don't know because the obvious question was not asked or answered.

We also can see that, according to the numbers, only an infinitesimal portion of the requests by previous Presidents were ever modified. In the Bush(2) years we see that over 3% were modified. Does that mean that the requests were blatantly unapprovable as written, or does that mean that the Bush White House was under more serious partisan scrutiny than previous administrations? Oops, I guess that question wasn't asked or answered either.

Finally, we, as news consumers do deserve a little bit of context. What is so special about the times we live in? Why would request levels for warrants rise so high? Were these requests driven by any particular events?

I guess in the modern days of journalism we can expect no context but fully unattributed accusations backed up by poorly analyzed data.

From AKI with a hat/tip to Right Nation, this short article on just another garden variety mass grave in Iraq.

Karbala, 27 Dec. (AKI) - Police in the Shiite holy city of Karbala say they have uncovered a mass grave containing the remains of men, women and children. The gruesome find was made by workers digging a water pipeline. Local authorities say they believe the corpses are those of a hundred or more Shiites slaughtered just after the end of the first Gulf War, in reprisal for having staged an uprising against Saddam Hussein.

There are believed to be as many as 30,000 victims in the Shiite revolt. Since the overthrow of Saddam in April 2003, scores of mass graves have been found, mainly in the northern Kurdish areas or in the Shiite-inhjabited areas of southern Iraq.

(Fmk/Aki)

The man responsible for the many mass graves in Iraq is today behind bars and being tried for his crimes. However, a lot of people on the left aren't happy with this arrangment, preferring instead, that Saddam still be in power, and that the people, if they wanted to be free, should rise up on their own.

Writing in Townhall today, Michael Barone has a very succinct analysis of the controversy involving the NSA's warrantless communication intercepts since 9/11.

Let's put the issue very simply. The president has the power as commander in chief under the Constitution to intercept and monitor the communications of America's enemies. Indeed, it would be a very weird interpretation of the Constitution to say that the commander in chief could order U.S. forces to kill America's enemies but not to wiretap -- or, more likely these days, electronically intercept -- their communications.

(snip)

The Constitution, Justice Robert Jackson famously wrote, should not be interpreted in a way that makes it "a suicide pact." The notion that terrorists' privacy must be respected when they place a cell-phone call to someone in the United States is in the nature of a suicide pact. The Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures in the United States should not be stretched into a ban on interceptions of communications from America's enemies abroad.

Sooner or later, common sense has to dictate some of this discussion. We already have a large chunk of our populace that has forgotten much about 9/11. This is understandable in that most people never knew anyone killed in the attack, have never seen ground zero, and have lives that are more or less returned to normal--that is to a pre-9/11 world. However, politicians are PAID to live in today's world. Today's world is one where we are at risk of attack, and we are at risk of attacks that would make 9/11 pale in comparison.

If we ever suffer another attack of 9/11's magnitude we will see the stamping of feet and the pointing of fingers like never before. These stampings and pointings will be directed at a White House that didn't do everything possible to stop the attack. The question is, what is everything?

For a country that can debate the meaning of "is", how will it ever be possible to arrive at an appropriate definition of "everything?" How will we, within the framework of our constitution, existing law and political partisanship, ever determine what means are necessary to protect our citizenry?

I'm afraid that these debates will become much easier as more skyscrapers fall to Earth. Common sense is sometimes purchased at great cost.

Monday, December 26, 2005

Spying on e-mail and cell phone traffic without a warrant. Searching offices and residences without a court order. Locking citizens away for weeks or months without filing charges.

Sound like your worst nightmare about the supposedly lawless Bush administration? Perhaps. But I refer to restrictions on civil liberties that are taking place not in the United States but, in the order in which I cited them, Canada, France and Great Britain.

That should help to put some things in perspective, particularly in light of how Bush is getting bashed in other countries over his wanton trampling of US civil liberties.

From UPI with a hat tip to LGF, up to 1/3 of the $590 million spent by the UN relief effort has gone to overhead.

The Financial Times says its two-month investigation showed the money appears to have been spent on administration, staff and related costs. The $590 million was part of the United Nation's $1.1 billion disaster flash appeal.

The newspaper also found several U.N. agencies continue to refuse to disclose details of their relief expenditure in spite of earlier pledges of transparency by senior officials.

This article from every American's good friend, Jack Straw in The Times-Online.

THE CHRISTMAS CARD I sent out as Blackburn’s MP is a proper one. It was designed by Anna Souroullas (Year 3 of Holy Souls RC Primary School), who won a competition that I organised with some Blackburn schools. But it also has a proper message inside. “Best wishes for Christmas and the new year”.

I claim no pride of ownership in this message. After all it’s what one should expect of a Christmas card. But I have just noticed — alas, for the first time — that the card I sent out in my capacity as Foreign Secretary has the anodyne, non-Christmas message of “Season’s Greetings”. And I was horrified to learn from an American friend that in the circles in which she, at least, moves it is considered not the done thing to wish people one does not know well “Merry Christmas”, still less to send out “Christmas” cards saying so.

As a state housing official, LaToya Cotton was supposed to help some of the poorest people in Washtenaw County obtain federal rent aid.

But investigators say that over 10 years, Cotton, 45, stole the identities of dozens of people and used the information to divert more than $1 million in housing vouchers for her own use, according to documents filed this week in U.S. District Court in Detroit.

A search warrant affidavit for her office filed by Greg Stejskal, the FBI's senior agent in Ann Arbor, described how Cotton allegedly used her position with the Michigan State Housing Development Authority to siphon personal information, generating housing vouchers that were sent directly to a bogus account she created.

"This case is Robin Hood in reverse," Stejskal said Friday. "She was living in a mansion and there were low-income people on a Section 8 waiting list."

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Burt Prelutsky writing in Town Hall today wonders whether respect for Neville Chamberlain has surpassed that respect given to Winston Churchill.

Indeed. Neville might even make the ideal presidential candidate for the Democrat Party this upcoming election, that is, if he wasn't already dead. However, if John Kerry was able to pass that litmus test Chamberlain might as well.

December 23, 2005 (Rougblog Exclusive) Decorated war veteran and current Pennsylvania Congressman Jack Murtha attacked the White House today for the drawdown of troops under conditions not in accordance with Democrat Party military tactics.

"The time to leave the field of battle is for surrender," said Murtha, a career military man before entering Congress. "Full retreat is an opportunity for goodwill, and we are squandering that potential goodwill."

The White House has said it is studying troop level reductions that could begin as soon as early next year.

"You look at the animal kingdom. When a dog leaves a fight he lowers his head and submits. The other dog lets the submitting dog go. The unextinct caribou in ANWR do the same thing. Only, well, they have antlers and not huge canine teeth. This is no way to leave the field of battle. Haven't we learned anything from Viet Nam?"

Friday, December 23, 2005

Protesters at the soup kitchen denounced the group as racists. One Muslim woman shouted at Lescure: "Our fathers are Muslims and they fought for France with honour and loyalty."

A local left-wing militant said the protesters did not want Lescure's soup kitchen to operate unopposed.

"This pork-based soup kitchen is pure discrimination, it's an in-your-face way of telling people who don't eat pork -- you can stay in your cardboard boxes and starve," said Teresa Mafeis, holding back tears of anger.

"After the holidays, we're going to set up our own soup kitchen and there will be shorba for everyone," she said, using the Arabic word for soup.

In a Washington Post op-ed today, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle displays the intellectual reasoning and master strategy behind which he was booted out of the Senate in his last run for office. Thanks to LGF.

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.

The main character is Daniel Webster, a drug-addicted Episcopal priest whose wife depends heavily on her mid-day martinis.

Webster regularly sees and talks with a very unconventional white-robed, bearded Jesus. The Webster family is rounded out by a 23-year-old homosexual Republican son, a 16-year-old daughter who is a drug dealer, and a 16-year-old adopted son who is having sex with the bishop's daughter.

At the office, his lesbian secretary is sleeping with his sister-in-law.

This is the best that NBC can do in its characterization of Christians?

Monica Conyers -- who is married to Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., and who will take a seat on the Detroit City Council next month -- got into a fight with another woman at a bar, police sources told the Free Press on Thursday.

The councilwoman-elect's spokesman, Sam Riddle, confirmed the confrontation but claimed Monica Conyers was randomly attacked by a drunken woman at a party and was forced to defend herself.

Conyers, 41, who was elected to the City Council in November, filed a police report on Wednesday, accusing the other woman -- identified by police as Rebecca Mews of Walled Lake -- of attacking her early Tuesday morning at Crossroads Lounge on Livernois in Detroit

(snip)

Police officials spoke on condition of anonymity about the incident because of the potential political sensitivity involved.

According to one police source, Mews alleged Conyers arrived at a party at the bar and began asking patrons to buy her a drink.

When no one did, she approached a man at the bar and said, "I know you're going to buy me a drink," the source said, citing Mews' police report.

Mews, who was with the man at the bar, wasn't pleased, and the two women began to fight, the report said. The women each say the other struck first.

Riddle criticized police for talking to the media about the incident. He said Conyers hasn't requested special treatment.

Free drinks couldn't be considered special treatment, could they? Or, does special treatment only offically apply to government agencies, and not run-of-the-mill constituents?

From Patrick Devenny in FrontPage Mag, the Presbyterian Church USA in October helped to sponsor a delegation's trip to Lebanon for "educational" purposes, and along the way had the rare blessing of meeting with Nabil Qawuq, Hezbollah's commander in Southern Lebanon.

Qawuq is responsible for leading the bulk of the Shi’ite terrorist group’s combat forces, while frequently overseeing attacks on Israeli positions and attempts to kidnap Israeli soldiers or civilians.

Among other valuable soundbites that were later broadcast on Al-Manar "Hezbollah’s televised conduit for frothing hate speech" were these words by Robert Worley, the delegation's spokesman:

“Americans hear in the Western media that Hizbullah is a terrorist organization, and they do not hear any other opinion. They know nothing about the party’s concern for the people of the south.”

Worley then pointed out that Hezbollah and his church share similar goals, along with comparable opponents:

“We have suffered much pressure on the part of Jewish organizations in the U.S. because [of our help in] divesting corporations working with Israel. We want Jerusalem to be a united city..”

Hating Israel is in vogue in much of the world, and that certainly is the case in the primarily Arab Middle East. I don't understand, however, how such ignorance can permeate the free world of thought and expression in the Christian churches of the United States--and how these churches can so conveniently place themselves willingly in the toolbox of Islamic anti-Jewry.

Other stinging rebukes came from The UN Security Council and the African Union.

The African Union, which maintains 7,000 peacekeepers in Darfur, said it was "outraged" by the Abu Sorouj attack. An AU statement said the organization's peace mediator Salim Ahmed Salim, condemned "the unwarranted brutal killings of numerous innocent civilians, including women and children, and the destruction of their homes and property by armed militia."

The U.N. Security Council demanded Wednesday that the warring parties in Sudan's Darfur region honor a ceasefire agreement and said it was determined to hold accountable anyone impeding the peace process and breaking an arms embargo on the region.

The council called on the government and rebels "to fulfill their commitments to conclude a just and full peace accord without further delay."

AU-sponsored peace talks ended Dec. 7 in Abuja, Nigeria, and another round is not expected before the new year.

The AU also urged Sudanese officials to ensure that the assailants "face the full force of the law."

If that doesn't keep those Arab Islamic militants in line I don't know what will.

Sergei Kazennov, section head at IMEMO of the Russian Academy of Sciences:

"America does not give a damn about Iraq, all they need is a face-saving move to pull out troops in more or less decent manner by the next election. That is why Bush acknowledged that they had not had enough intelligence for invading Iraq. As a result, public support ratings for Bush jumped 6 percent after that repentant statement.

The election in Iraq largely has a destabilizing impact, as far as I am concerned. The Americans had hoped to win some support of the Shi'ite majority, it did not happen. Now the rumor has it that they are set to deal with Iran next March. They might as well use Israel as a main striking force.

The Americans are stuck in a quagmire over there. Consequently, they might stop playing the world police in other parts of the globe. On the whole, I do not think that the situation is going to change for the better after the election. Some countries pledged their support and cooperation to America in Iraq. However, the only thing they can do under the circumstances is speak out in support of U.S. policy.

The Americans are going to pull out of Iraq shortly, and they are going to do it quietly. But there's no way they can do it quietly and smoothly. They wanted to pull out of Vietnam quietly and look what happened. It is likely to look like an avalanche this time around, loud and messy. Britain is on the way out. Italy is leaving Iraq. A vacuum is being created. What is going to fill it is a very sensitive issue. It might as well be a bridgehead of the world terrorist organizations.

A conference on the Iraqi issues was held in Moscow. The participants concluded that Iraq needed a new secular dictator, a new Saddam. Where can we find a new Hussein? Shall we reinstate the original one? From my point of view, it does not seem that improbable. He might be cleared and some local officials would be held responsible for the massacre in Kurdistan. Any options can be considered now including those with Saddam on board. The Americans can not just leave. Right now they are in a situation where every new step can only make things worse."

While the reviews are generally good for Munich, (here is one from Cinema Blend) the latest movie by director Steven Speilberg is not based on a true story any more than How The Grinch Stole Christmas is based on the Bible.

In a scathing rebuke by Debbie Schlussel in FrontPage Mag, the movie cannot make distinctions between what is right and wrong, and neither can its characters.

Spielberg’s Mossad agents question why they should kill terrorists who murdered innocent people, when they will be replaced by other terrorists. Using that fallacious logic, why have a justice system at all? Bank robbers who go to jail will be replaced by more bank robbers. Ditto for child molesters, rapists, al-Qaeda terrorists, etc.

With so much of the dialogue and events of the movie patently false and purely the imagination of ultra-liberal and socialist scriptwriter Tony Kushner and Mr. Spielberg, I have to ask the question, why make this movie at all? Why not make a movie based on the events of the tragedy with real characters and no moral quivalency, or why not start over from scratch with a fictitious hostage situation in Rome, or Berlin or New York?

Of course Munich will put butts in the seat. I wonder however, how many of those people leaving the theater will realize that what they have seen was fantasy. And, I wonder, if that isn't the real point of the film after all.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

The New York transit strike couldn't be more ill timed or ill advised. Is it really any wonder that the modern labor movement is shrinking? I havn't felt so bad for big labor since the baseball strike of the mid-90s. I'm not sure I've seen a baseball game since then either.

Their demands read more like a letter to Santa. They now contribute not a cent to their health care (know anybody with this perk?) and are rejecting the MTA's "outrageous request" that they contribute a whopping 1% (Yes, you read that right: one percent) to their health care. They want the retirement age lowered to 50. (You'd have to say that's moving in the opposite direction from the rest of the civilized world, no?) and they want to put a cap on how much discipline the MTA can mete out to its members. Right. Can't imagine anybody would mind the MTA looking the other way for the last half year -- after hitting their TWU quota -- for train operators driving too fast, or under the influence of alcohol, whatever. What the heck, they can always get 'em early next year, before the quota is hit, right? They also asked for hefty salary increases when the average train driver's pay alone is $63,000, as compared to the average salary for the average joe in New York at $45,000.

In ten years, when oil is selling for $100 per barrel and gasoline is going for about $5.00 a gallon, and when politicians and voters start complaining on the high price of petroleum products, all we have to do is read this from Reuters.

An administrator at Cal State Sacramento has declared the holidays of Christmas and Independence Day as being religiously discriminatory and ethnically insensitive. In a memorandum to others in her office she declared that

"Time has come to recognize that religious discrimination, as well as ethnic insensitivity to certain holidays, is forbidden."

The e-mail memorandum was sent on December 9th, the text of which has been confirmed through the university.

The memo specifically names Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentine's Day, the 4th of July, St. Patrick's Day and Easter as the most offensive holidays, but Sonntag adds that they are "off the top of the list," implying that there may be others.

She wrote that the ban was being implemented "in order to avoid offending someone else" because Sacramento State is "a secular university and we are a public service area that has a diverse employee and student populations [sic] even in our private offices."

It used to be that universities were a place to go to have the mind exercised and stretched to new limits. It seems now that at least some believe this growing must be done in a way that doesn't offend anyone.

I have heard it said that when you stand for everything, in effect you stand for nothing. This sort of policy achieves the same end by making certain to stand for nothing from the get-go.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Heigh-ho. The Iraq election's over, the media did their best to ignore it, and, judging from the rippling torsos I saw every time I switched on the TV, the press seem to reckon that that gay cowboy movie was the big geopolitical event of the last week, if not of all time. Yes, yes, I know: They're not, technically, cowboys, they're gay shepherds, but even Hollywood isn't crazy enough to think it can sell gay shepherds to the world. And the point is, even if I was in the mood for a story about two rugged insecure men who find themselves strangely attracted to each other in a dark transgressive relationship that breaks all the rules, who needs Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger when you've got Howard Dean and Abu Musad al-Zarqawi? Yee-haw!

I count myself among the majority in the conservative movement. I'm disappointed in George Bush socially and economically, but on the world stage of national security, this man is truly a great President. I read the vitriol at Koz and The DU, and I see anger and hate slurried together atop countless other layers of anger and hate. They have spent the past five years attacking conservatives and all things conservative and they still cannot spoil my mood.

It feels good to be right on the side of right. Some leftists might want to try it sometime.

Ok, please someone, explain to me again how the "outing" of an already outed domestic, desk job, non-covert agent analyst is worthy of a multi-million dollar investigation, when there are few cries for investigations over leak after leak of classified information that will damage the nation's security. Where is the outrage over this imbalance?

In just the past few months we've had the leak of "Secret Prisons," and now the leak of the very legal surveilance of international communications, some of which had one leg in the United States.

If it were up to me the subpoenas would be flying. Someone or some people inside the intelligence community is trying to take down this administration, and it is willing to do so at the cost of our nation's security. This is treason folks, and someone should be hanged.

The current debate is whether the attempted assassination was carried out by internal government operators trying to get rid of the oft firing loose cannon, or whether the attempt was made by pro-western revolutionaries. I'm with the latter camp. Ahmadinejad is a dangerous nut. However, he is being handled by a group of Islamist Jihadi nuttists every bit as bad as he is. I think if they wanted him gone they would simply wipe him off the face of the planet leaving no trace.

We in the west aren't the only people that this maniac narcissist scares. There has been a building body of discontent in Iran for years as those inside the country see democracy budding elsewhere in the region. I'm thinking that someone, seeing these other changes taking place elsewhere, listening to Ahmadinejad's rhetoric, and fearing the mullah's hands on a nuclear weapon, may have just ran out of patience.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

From the National Review Online, this opinion piece on the misguidedness of John Sununu's filibuster of the Patriot Act.

Sununu stands with Democrats blocking an up-or-down vote on the reauthorization. If Sununu and his Republican colleagues Larry Craig, Lisa Murkowski, and Chuck Hagel weren’t giving Democrats cover, the Democrats probably wouldn’t be able to maintain their near-unanimity on this politically perilous vote. What a shame.

From Powerline, this article on the anti-torture measure, non-renewal of the Patriot Act, and the NYTimes disclosure of the NSA's monitoring of international phonecalls in the United States.

But the administration is the victim of its own success. In the absence of attacks, the nation is becoming less serious about protecting itself, although I doubt that the public as a whole is as unserious as Congress. It was no coincidence, for example, that none of the Republican Senators who supported the filibuster of the Patriot Act is up for re-election next year, while the two Democrats who opposed the filibuster both will be running at that time.

At least the next time we have a terror attack in this country we will not have to sit a commission of experts to determine who and what was to blame. All we have to do is look at the votes.

Friday, December 16, 2005

Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has subpoenaed two officials at the Free Enterprise Fund in connection with ads the conservative group has run criticizing him for his indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R.-Tex.).

The ads attacked Earle, who has a history of indicting his political enemies in both parties, comparing him to an attack dog.

In an unrelated story, a civil aeronautics company is designing a glider aircraft modeled after Ronnie Earle's head.

I am simply flabbergasted at this. I suppose that we could at least feel we've taken the high road when the first dirty bomb hits our soil. We could be comforted at our goodness at the funerals. We could cheer our restraint in the economic chaos that would follow such an event. We could pat ourselves on the back as we deal with the cleanup and bypassing that huge black void on our maps for generations. We could celebrate the fact that we didn't waterboard or make a terrorist stay awake or stand for too many hours at a time. We could be comforted by our own goodness as we take our children, friends and neighbors to the clinics and hospitals for years afterwards as victims succumb to the radiation poisoning.

This is only a feel good law. It is designed as a symbol to others in our world that we are a good people. Even McCain says this.

"We've sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists," McCain said earlier as he sat next to Bush in the Oval Office.

There are three major problems with this. First of all, no one else in the world will believe this is anything other than a good will gesture, because, those people today that accuse us of systemic torture do NOT believe we are a good people. These people think we are imperialists, warmongers, racists and infidels. How much is this gesture going to mean to people so driven by hate?

Secondly, we already have laws in place on torture. Those that took part in the Iraqi abuse scandal were under investigation long before the pictures hit the television sets. Those that are found guilty are punished under current regulations. This law will not change the behavior of loose cannons in our military. Those persons will operate outside of the rules regardless. This law is only a restriction on those in our service that already abide by current anti-torture regulations.

Finally, not all methods supposedly banned by this agreement should be considered torture. Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, standing for hours at a time, loud noise, bright lights, etc., should not be considered torture. These approaches to information gathering produce no long-term physical damage, but can be very effective in gathering information.

So, we won't waterboard or make Khalid stand too long in one place. The only resultant change is that Khalid's jihadist friend is less likely to get revealed--and we should feel good about it.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

15,000,000 voters with turnouts high in all areas. Low violence to greet voters on the street. Families walking to the polls together, and a festive atmosphere according to the on-line news service accounts. There were election glitches here and there, but, by and large, in a country that has been so far removed from freedom and voting rights, things went stunningly well.

I have watched no television today and didn't listen to the radio at all either until late afternoon when I put on All Things Considered on NPR. It took about 10 seconds of listening to NPR before Ann Garrels spoke of Iraqis upset with the election.

Perhaps it is just my impeccable timing to be able to catch some pessemism from a noted leftist like Gerrals.

Despite all of that, I feel like what we have done is a good thing. It has been difficult, and there have been many lives lost. Many heroes made the ultimate sacrifice for what occurred today. The difficulty certainly doesn't end today either, nor will it tomorrow or next week. But, we have accomplished something that so many people, including Gerrals I'm sure, thought we couldn't have approached. Now, from this new summit, we can climb taller hills and accomplish even greater things.

The idea of a budding democracy in the Middle-East carries with it a tremendous long term promise of peace and stability in that part of the world. Anyone that believes that this isn't in our national interest has probably attended too many Saddam Hussein birthday celebrations.

It is hardly a surprise to me that Hollywood stuggles these days. Hollywood stands in opposition to nearly everything that I believe in, and when you throw in the inflated cost of sitting in a theater for a couple of hours ($29.00 the other night before popcorn) I rarely make the effort any longer.

With a hat tip to Right Nation, this article on current Hollywood woes.

A couple of comments from RightNation as well.

From Noclevermoniker:

Interesting also that they've missed the fact that many of us have turned off of movies because of the moonbat actors preaching to us "proles".

Patie Bear:

If the stupid people in Hollyweird would put out a PRO American, PRO Troops, PRO I love my country movie I bet their sales would improve.

There just wouldn't be that many stars to make up the cast.

And Snaphook:

What we need is more gay cowboy movies! Yeah, that's the ticket, what middle America wants is gay cowboy movies! We spend hours contemplating gay cowboys, why the most important issue facing us today is gay cowboys!

And when Hollyweird isn't making gay cowboy movies it's making historically ridiculous movies like JFK, Pearl, and Syriana.

Hollyweird is so out of touch with mainstream America that it's amazing that any of their movies makes money. We've been in a War On Terror since 9/11, anyone seen any good movies about our heroic soldiers fighting for our safety and freedom? NO! Would any of us go see a movie about our heroic soldiers fighting for America in the war on terror? HELL YES!!!

Not only are most of the actors and actresses the most irritating, self absorbed dweebs on the planet, the movies are pure crap.

From The Dawn Patrol, Planned Parenthood Golden Gate published on its "real stories" section of their website the tale of a 12 year old rape victim whom, according to the "real story" they helped by covering the whole thing up.

The Planned Parenthood chapter has removed the story from their website, but it is archived through The Dawn Patrol.

The abortion lobby has gotten so out of control on this "right to privacy" issue that they have become a not-so-clandestine prosecutor, judge and jury. Not only are the protecting the privacy of a 12 year old minor from their parents, but they are also protecting the privacy of a child raping monster. That is not a record I'd want to hang my hat on, regardless of how many babies I had successfully aborted.

Middle-East and Muslim culture is clashing in non-Muslim countries where Muslim males have moved and are clinging to the cultural and religious barbarism of home. In two different articles contained in FrontPageMag today, the exportation of this culture is creating major problems around the world.

Four days after he set foot in Australia, the rape spree began. And during his sexual assault trial in a New South Wales courtroom, the Pakistani man began to berate one of his tearful 14-year-old victims because she had the temerity to shake her head at his testimony.

But she had every reason to express her disgust. After taking an oath on the Quran, the man known only as MSK told the court he had committed four attacks on girls as young as 13 because they had no right to say "no." They were not covering their face or wearing a headscarf, and therefore, the rapist proclaimed: "I'm not doing anything wrong."

MSK is already serving a 22-year jail term for leading his three younger brothers in a gang rape of two other young Sydney girls in 2002. In his own defence, he argued that his cultural background, was responsible for his crimes.

And he is right.

In some parts of Pakistan, sexual assault, including gang rape, is officially sanctified as a legitimate form of enforcing the social value system.

One village council recently ordered that five young girls should be "abducted, raped or murdered" for refusing to be treated as chattel. The girls were aged between six and thirteen when they were married without their knowledge, to pay a family debt.

And when Mukhtar Mai's 12-year-old brother was alleged to have committed an offence in a small Pakistani farming village, the village council ordered that his sister be gang-raped. So, she was taken to a hut where four men repeatedly assaulted her.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan there were 804 cases of such officially orchestrated sexual assault in 2000, and 434 of these were gang rapes. And if that isn't bad enough, the victims of these atrocities are then expected to commit suicide because rape victims bring irreparable shame upon their family.

How bad has it gotten in Sweden?

A group of Swedish teenage girls has designed a belt that requires two hands to remove and which they hope will deter would-be rapists. "It's like a reverse chastity belt," one of the creators, 19-year-old Nadja Bjork, told AFP, meaning that the wearer is in control, instead of being controlled.

Bjork and one of her partners now plan to start a business to mass produce the belts and are currently in negotiations with potential partners. "But I'm not doing this for the money," she said. "I'm really passionate about stopping rape. I think it's terrible."

In an online readers' poll from the newspaper Aftonbladet, 82% of the women expressed fear to go outside after dark. There are reports of rapes happening in broad daylight. 30 guests in a Swedish public bath watched as 17 girl was raped recently, and nobody did anything. The girl was first approached by 16-year-old boy. He and his friends followed her as she walked away to the grotto, and inside the grotto he got her blocked in the corner, ripped off her bikini and raped her, while his friend held her firm.

While Sweden is often considered the most tolerant of all European countries

it is four times more likely that a known rapist is born abroad, compared to persons born in Sweden. Resident aliens from Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia dominate the group of rape suspects. According to these statistics, almost half of all perpetrators are immigrants.

In Norway and Denmark, we know that non-Western immigrants, which frequently means Muslims, are grossly overrepresented on rape statistics. In Oslo, Norway, immigrants were involved in two out of three rape charges in 2001. The numbers in Denmark were the same, and even higher in the city of Copenhagen with three out of four rape charges.

Sweden has a larger immigrant, including Muslim, population than any other country in northern Europe. The numbers there are likely to be at least as bad as with its Scandinavian neighbors. The actual number is thus probably even higher than what the authorities are reporting now, as it doesn't include second generation immigrants. Lawyer Ann Christine Hjelm, who has investigated violent crimes in Svea high court, found that 85 per cent of the convicted rapists were born on foreign soil or by foreign parents.

Western culture and American in particular has prided itself in the "melting pot" persona. It is time however, now faced with exploding illegals, and the threat of culture clashes, that we become more stringent in stamping out all illegal immigration, and at the same time, demanding allegiance to America, our political structure, our culture of inclusion, and our respect of inalienable rights.

The last thing we should accept in America is for our young women to have to resort to the inventing and wearing of "reverse chastity belts" just to stay safe from culturally retarded foreign prowlers. In an age of tolerance, there are still some things we should not tolerate.

Mexican President Vicente Fox denounced as "disgraceful and shameful" on Wednesday a proposal to build a high-tech wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to stop illegal immigrants.

Concerned about the huge numbers of illegal immigrants streaming across the border and worried it could be an entry point for terrorists, a U.S. lawmaker has proposed building two parallel steel and wire fences running from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Coast. But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said a wall running the length of a border would cost too much.

There are many reasons why Vincente Fox doesn't want this wall built...but none of them have to do with immigrant's rights.

Mexico is a country with huge corruption and bureaucratic problems in all levels of government, has an exploding population that has difficulty feeding and clothing itself, and enjoys a huge influx of cash to its population through the import of American dollars sent back home from family members working in the United States. Closing the border would force many of Mexico's population problems back onto itself, and would also help to shut off the money tap that pours into Mexico from the US.

The huge cost of supporting an illegal population that grows by thousands every day is not ignored by Washington, nor is it unaware of the problem of imported crime, gangs, and drugs that leak like a sieve. However, it is the influx of potential terrorists that is finally forcing a "close the border" debate forward that should have been dealt with in previous administrations.

Tens of thousands of Lebanese - men and women, Christians and Muslims - shouted insults at Syria on Wednesday in an outpouring of anger as yet another assassinated anti-Syrian campaigner was buried.

Lebanon was brought to a halt by a general strike called in mourning for editor and lawmaker Gibran Tueni, but neighboring Syria largely ignored the events. Syrian officials have denied involvement in the slaying.

Doctors, nurses, bankers and businessmen joined political activists and students to bid farewell to Tueni, the outspoken 48-year-old general manager of the country's leading An-Nahar newspaper, who was killed Monday in a car bombing along with two bodyguards.

"Enough blood and killings. They (Syrians) are taking away our best men in Lebanon," said an enraged Mazen Abdel-Samad, a 25-year-old university student wearing the red and white scarf that came to symbolize Lebanon's uprising against Syrian control.

When you are used to ruling through intimidation and killing, habits die hard. In this one small corner of the world, however, people are beginning to fight back.

For most, it's a choice of the men's room or the women's. A Brazilian city is trying to give an option to those who don't fit easily into either category.

A bill passed by the Nova Iguacu city council on Tuesday would require night clubs, shopping malls, movie theaters and large restaurants to provide a third type of bathroom for transvestites. Mayor Lindberg Farias will decide whether to make it a law.

"A lot of lawmakers didn't want to deal with this issue, but it's a serious problem in society," said city Councilman Carlos Eduardo Moreira. "It's a way to put an end to prejudice."

Moreira, a 32-year-old policeman on leave from the force, said he got the idea when dozens of transvestites showed up for a local samba show.

"It was a real problem. The women didn't feel comfortable having them in the ladies' room, and the men didn't want them in their bathroom either," said Moreira, who is married and the father of two children. "I'm not doing this for my own benefit."

He said the "alternative bathrooms" could also be used by men or women who didn't mind sharing space with transvestites.

Moreira said there are nearly 28,000 transvestites in Nova Iguacu, a poor city of about 800,000 on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

Just a suggestion here. If you are completely happy with your sexual orientation and engenderification, while vacationing in Nova Iguacu, Brazil, don't drink the water.

The Palestinian Authority, that same loose government entity of the Palestinians that the US provides financial support for, has passed a law that compensates the families of suicide bombers in the form of monthly paid pensions. From the Israel National News.

Under the new law, the terroristÂs family will be paid a base sum of $250 per month. The law takes into account extended family arrangements commonplace in Arab societies. The families of married terrorists are entitled to an additional $50 per month, and $15 are added for each child, $25 for each parent, and $15 for each brother who lived with the terrorist prior to his death.

The monies, to be paid out of the general budget of the Palestinian Authority, are significant sums for average Arab families living in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

This might be one of those times when our own actions need to be critiqued for compliance with the Bush Doctrine. There should not be one penny of financial support given to the Palestinian Authority by the United States for health care, housing, or economic development while this law is in place. Anything else is just wink-wink diplomacy and the worst sort of toothless political hypocrisy.

From Newsmax via Right Nation, Bob Shieffer wants Katie Couric as his replacement at the CBS Evening News. Schieffer has been the interim replacemet for Dan Rather since his retirement on the heels of the "Memogate" pre-election news scandal of last year.

Couric is "a big-time journalist. I’m hoping we can get her,” Schieffer told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"She’s a great interviewer, people know who she is, and she has enormous credibility. People believe her. They take her seriously. She would make us a better news department.”

If she helps CBS to provide a better news department it speaks more for how horrible a news department they currently have than it does about any lofty goals they have for their own network's news.

Couric is a flag waving leftist that has made no bones about her liberal leanings and liberal bias. This is no improvement over the past at CBS, but just another verse to the same tired song.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

According to the Detroit Free Press, there are 83 Michigan state employees that are both collecting a salary paid by the state of Michigan, as well as collecting on a pension paid by the state of Michigan.

Is it really any wonder why Michigan is going broke?

This is just another group of gluttonous bureaucrats with their collective noses in the public trough, being paid by a group of irresponsible bureaucrats who also have their noses deeply planted in the trough of public compensation. You can bet that any of these people, if they owned their own businesses, would not allow their employees to do this. Why? Because it is not good for business. But, since they are simply sponging off the taxpayers, and the salary supply (tax money) is unending, who cares?

Ed Dore, chief deputy director for the Michigan Department of Community Health, returned to state work in January knowing he'd receive a combined salary and annual pension. His combined take is $158,767.

Dore said he took a large pay cut to give up his job at a Lansing hospital and return to state government. He had retired at age 56 in late 2002 as chief operating officer for then-Secretary of State Candice Miller.

Drawing both a paycheck and pension "wasn't an issue with me," Dore said. "I spent 30 years in public service. Frankly, I missed it."

Dore is the largest beneficiary of the double dipping, one of 16 individuals collect a total in pension and salary of over $100,000.

It is apparent that this practice has been found to be legal, and I am not suggesting otherwise, but stupidity is not illegal, and this is just plain stupid.

I suppose I should find some peace over the fact that the State of Michigan isn't also paying these people consulting fees, well, assuming that they aren't...

"If the killing of Jews in Europe is true and the Zionists are supported because of this excuse, why should the Palestinian nation pay the price?" he said.

The most interesting part of this whole article to me was the rather obscure last paragraph.

European diplomats say his anti-Israel comments, which have included calling the Jewish state a "tumor" that should be "wiped off the map", may cause a delay in planned talks between the European Union and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program.

What sort of credentials do you have to have to be a European diplomat? Let me get this straight. The free world wants to sit down with the Iranians about their nuclear program and the Iranians want to acquire nuclear weapons. Yet, because the Iranian President is a numbskull, some EU diplomats are threatening to delay the talks as some kind of punishment to Iran?

Ahmadinejad might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he's at least a tad sharper than the best and brightest of the EU diplomatic corps.

The media seem to have come up with a formula that would make any war in history unwinnable and unbearable: They simply emphasize the enemy's victories and our losses.

All wars come with death and loss of life. In fact, as Sowell points out:

Utter ignorance of history enables any war with any casualties to be depicted in the media as an unmitigated disaster.

Even after Nazi Germany surrendered at the end of World War II, die-hard Nazi guerrilla units terrorized and assassinated both German officials and German civilians who cooperated with Allied occupation authorities.

Each American life that has been lost in this war has been a tragedy. But what they ultimately lived for, and died for, is no tragedy. Many journalists seem to be great at seeing the tragedies of our world. Should that be the major skill necessary to become one?

Monday, December 12, 2005

I really don't know enough about this to make any comments because the reports are so confused and incomplete. I do wonder however, if the press is once again sanitizing the reports to avoid the mention of Muslims or Arabs.

The death penalty of Williams, 51, will go ahead as planned at 3:01 a.m. EST (12:01 PST) at San Quentin State Prison. Williams will be executed for murdering four people in two 1979 holdups.

Williams has consistently denied committing the gruesome killings, but has apologized for forming the notoriously bloodthirsty gang

Now, lets wait to see what happens on the streets. If Tookie has indeed reformed, he will demand calm. He will go to meet his maker humbly and remorseful for what he has done.

If Tookie wanes away quietly, with no command of non-violence, he is making a demand for just that. Lets us see if Tookie speaks with his voice, or with his silence.

Update: 9:34 PM

This comment from an LA Times message board seems to cover pretty much the full scale of opposition to the execution.

All I have to say is this is all bringing blacks and whites against each other and for what? Okay, white people are getting their racist wish: to see a black man put to death at a white persons hands. This is what you wanted right? Now you finally have it. I never knew how many racist people we still had in the world but after reading the comments I know EXACTLY how many we have and that a lot. You talk of equality and loving you brother but no one is doing that? Wouldn’t you think that Tookie Williams would have been confessed to these heinous crimes if he indeed committed them? It all just a bunch of BS and everyone knows is. LEAVE THIS MAN ALONE!!! ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE WHAT THIS MAN HAS TRULY DONE! To all the people who called him a monster and want to see if he takes the gas instead of injection, I hop you burn in hell with you ignorant Asses. Who are you to call the shots? RACISTS, RACISTS, RACISTS!!! You make me hate you as a people. I am ashamed to even live on the same earth as some of you. Dr. Martin Luther King brought us together for no reason. Sometimes, I wonder what would the verdict be if Tookie was white and Albert Owens was black? And another thing: why is it that only the white person who was killed keeps getting flashed on CNN and other news? There were also three Koreans...or did you forget? Your too busy trying to see this man die that you don’t realize you look like KKK'S and slave owners. It makes me sick to see how white people actually think. You never cared about equality and freedom, you just cared about yourselves and now it is truly showing.

The British Sunday Times reported Sunday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has ordered the IDF to prepare to attack Iran's nuclear facilities at the end of March 2006, after Israeli intelligence supposedly discovered a number of secret uranium enrichment sites that were disguised as civilian buildings.

The article claimed that "military sources" have revealed that "Israel's armed forces have been ordered by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran."

The Sunday Times said that Israel had established an intelligence base in northern Iraq, and had even sent forces into Iran. The article also reported that ever since Sharon gave his order last week, IDF "special units" have been on high alert.

In response to the Sunday Times article, Maj.-Gen. (Res.) Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry's foreign policy department, said in an interview to Israel Radio that while a military operation against Iran's nuclear facilities could not be ruled out, Israel was a partner in international diplomatic efforts to address the threat from Teheran.

The idea that Israel is not considering and making plans to stop the Iranian threat is laughable. The idea that they shouldn't be making these very plans is also laughable.

If your closest neighbors hate you, your friends back peddle, the overseer shrugs and turns away, and your most vitriolic enemy is out frantically trying to obtain the weapon to use on you, what would you do?

Just my take, but if Senator Frist is too frightened to enact the "nuclear" or "constitutional" option in response to a fillibuster of Samuel Alito, then he will be too afraid to ever do it. The conservative wing of the Republican Party has been speaking loudly and clearly on this issue, and it will not be pacified by more gutless gestures of bi-partisanship. This across the aisle handshaking has been doing nothing but granting undeserved power to the liberal Democrat Party--power that was not granted to them by the voters in election cycle after cycle.

So, Dr. Frist, it is time to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. It is time to call the bluff of the blustering democrats and change Senate rules.

In fact, if Senate democrats start threatening fillibuster, change the rules IMMEDIATELY! Don't wait. Remove from them the instrument of their leverage. Then we will see who has the power.

Just don't force me to watch a whimpering Chuck Schumer as he drags his toys home to New York.

ISRAEL’S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.

The order came after Israeli intelligence warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities, believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations.

Iran’s stand-off with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over nuclear inspections and aggressive rhetoric from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who said last week that Israel should be moved to Europe, are causing mounting concern.

This is exactly where should all have been expected to be. UN and EU authorities, having been giving the responsibility of reeling in the Iranian nuclear problem, have done a lot of talking and finger pointing, posturing and gesturing, pontificating and threatening. There has been much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth. The end result of which is a situation that Israel and the US are going to be forced to deal with--because no one else on Earth is willing to stick their neck out on the chopping block of world opinion and fight evil. Big surprise there.

When all is said and done this problem will be dealt with. But who will the villified be? Will it be the Iranian President that recently threatened to wipe Israel off the map and wants to move the Jews to Europe? Will it be the evil mullahs of Iran that have been supporting world terrorism for years?

Of course not, it will be those nasty blood-sucking Jews and their lap dogs the Americans. You will see it on the streets in Paris, Damascus, Gaza, Brussels, San Francisco and wherever Cindy Sheehan happens to be hanging out. (As long as she isn't signing a book there might be some people there.)

Negotiating with terrorists and terrorist states is a waste of time. Diplomacy with terrorists should amount to a threat shortly followed by action. How many times must the world be taught that lesson before it finally sticks?

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Macular Degeneration is a disease of the eye that typically affects adults of 55 years of age and older. It has been discovered that many of those afflicted may have a genetic component present in their sight loss.

Last night, in a rough and tumble basketball game between Fairview and Hillman, Fairview was able to pull out a 15 point victory despite all three officials obviously suffering from advanced cases of this degenerative disease.

I am new to blogging. Both of you who have read my site realize this. I have, however, read blogs for several years and find myself on the blogs and engrossed in Web News for at least a couple of hours a day (more on weekends.) I watch little television any longer and while I still buy magazines and newspapers occasionally, I buy them much less frequently than I did before this wonderful and terrifying thing we call the internet was invented by Al Gore.

This post is nothing more than an introduction to some of you perhaps new to the blogging world. There are millions of blogs out there, and finding ones that are both entertaining and enlightening are quite rare. That is why I'm passing on this little endorsement of Protein Wisdom.

I have to wonder how Jeff Goldstein is able to write so prolifically while firmly cocooned in an armadillo-leather straight jacket. Maybe its just that everyday Jew double-jointedness that they use to control the Earth.

Here is just an example of one of his posts today. Read and enjoy.

First militant: I confess to being quite dispirited this day, Fahad. For if the grapevine is to be believed, Iraqi locals, our own Arab brethren (peace be upon them) turned over brother Amir Khalaf Fanoos to the infidel occupiers, siding with the West in this great war to restore the Caliphate and return the Arab world to its long dormant greatness and preeminence.

Second militant: Yes, but Isa, beleaguered people often become confused about their loyalties in times of war. Some will change sides and actively fight for the enemy; others will despair and hide themselves, rendered impotent by their own torn allegiances. This has happened throughout the history of warfare, and so it is to be expected that during our glorious struggle, a handful of Iraqi dogs would surrender to the will of the Great Satan, with his promises of technological marvel and televised, high-definition porn. Just as we have benefitted from those infidels who've become so enthralled by the romanticism of resistance and with the flowing silk finery of the noble, patriarchal Other that they have taken up our cause, however much they protest that obvious fact.

With less than four days to go before Williams' scheduled Tuesday execution, sporadic-yet-credible threats of civil unrest have prompted the council members and representatives from the city and county human relations commissions to ask religious leaders to emphasize a message of peace during weekend services.

"We picked up information that led us to believe that there were some planned and intentioned acts of violence that could occur in the wake of the decision or the execution planned for Stan "Tookie" Williams," Robin Toma, executive director of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, said during a news conference at City Hall.

Ok. Am I missing something here? To me it appears that The Gov Terminator should let the judged punishment be meted out if, for no other reason, than our government (be it National, State or Local) should not succumb to threats of terrorism.

If Tookie has reformed, let him rise now and make a statement against evil and violence. Let him say to those that will listen, that he accepts whatever his fate might be, and those that are left behind should do as well. Maybe by doing that he could save a few lives...otherwise he is just another remorseless murdered sitting his ass behind bars wishing he hadn't been caught.

Do I expect riots? Yep. Do I expect deaths? Yep. A few dozen. Is this horrible? Yep. Is it avoidable? No. Even if clemency is granted in this case and no riot ensues at this particular time, we will have very bad people believing that their threats of violence bear legally endorsed fruit. This is a slope paved with ice under Teflon soled slippers. The deaths will occur. The question is when, and what must we sacrifice in between a Tookie execution and the next high profile and unpopular judgment in Los Angeles.

In what is an incredibly shocking event, Senator Daniel Inouye has denounced the white flag ads sent to Republican State Parties earlier in the week.

I guess it is ok to attack, attack, attack, attack, and attack, but it is not ok for the White House to push back against the attacking because Inouye knows "what it takes to win a war, and I know that politics and an attack machine like the President’s plays no part in it. "

How does the signaling of retreat from all levels of the Democrat Party translate into a win in Iraq and the GWOT?

Wait, I think I'm on to something here. I believe the Democrat plan is for us to walk in backwards and pretend we are leaving. Those fascists won't know what hit 'em! That John Kerry, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Jack Murtha, and now Daniel Inouye are sure geniuses! Why didn't the UN think of this?

Wal-Mart has benefited American consumers by saving them an estimated $263 billion dollars by 2004, has increased employment by 210,000, and has resulted in an increase of real buying power for Americans by .9%.

This is just another tired attempt of a union to "guilt" people into supporting them with their own hard-earned salaries. I'm sorry, but my salary is made by me, and should only be spent responsibly in support of my family and its needs. I will budget for my charities using forward thought, and will only support those charities in whom I have faith that the money will be spent wisely on purposes that I believe in. I do not count among my worthy charities Union members that have wasted more money in their lifetime than I have ever made.

So, I guess I don't know where Jesus would be shopping, but I can bet he would know and understand economics at least a wee bit better than the United Food and Commercial Worker's Union. And, if he shopped at Wal-Mart, maybe he'd save enough money to be able to buy these feeble-minded union members a book on basic economics.